Sparks
by Cyanide Lemons
Summary: And at the end of the day, no matter how much you hated the person next to you, if he could work a BBQ you sucked it up and brown nosed your way into a full stomach. Second in tf2 series.


**AN: So things took longer than anticipated, but I'd like to think the quality is better this time, in part because I have an awesome new Beta Reader.**

**Thanks a million StephREDSniper.**

**This is in the same world as my Medic fanfic. There will be 9 chapters, for all nine classes.**

**So this is officially a series.**

…..

He'd spent years of his life behind the glare of two five-inch thick, ash covered goggles. The lenses were never quite clean due to condensation and the perpetual warping and twisting effect of the heat, and they blended the colours of the world around him in weird ways. He was practically colour blind.

It had been disconcerting, almost eerie, how similar the teams looked without their distinctive insignia. He had frozen more than once at the sight of what looked like himself at the business end of his gun. He had had to develop a strong hearing to compensate, and learnt how to recognise his teammates through more than just their looks; through their footsteps, their individual quirks, their breath. He probably knew more about their habits than even the Spy, who had spent months learning how to emulate the other classes.

It was not enough; sometimes, he would lash out at a teammate that talked a little too fast, or whose accent slipped a little too much. The team grumbled, but since the machines that beeped all around them minimised friendly fire there really wasn't anything they could do.

It came in handy though; when it had saved him and the others, against enemy Spies. It became so common place to have lighted up some unfortunate spook that he even started looking forward to it, hanging around the Engineer's vulnerable machines, lying in wait and with twitching fingers. It seemed to unsettle his team, and he supposed the laughing was maybe a little too much, but the Engineer seemed to appreciate it, and it wasn't like the whole thing was a popularity contest.

And at the end of the day, no matter how much you hated the person next to you, if he could work a BBQ you sucked it up and brown nosed your way into a full stomach.

So he spent his days hanging around a bunch of men who thought he was a girl, who couldn't understand a word he said, and who most likely were insane by some degree. He didn't mind so much, since he considered himself mostly just a simple guy. A little bit of mayhem, some good music to go with it, and a lot of fire was how he lived his life; something the company was all the more willing to provide, along with a decent pay check and some neat gadgets.

Except…

Except, well…

It was getting kind of boring.

At the beginning of the whole shin dig there was some sense of accomplishment, as if things where actually progressing. Now everything was stale. You stole a briefcase, you lost a control point, you pushed a bomb into a hole. Sometimes you died and sometimes you killed.

There was onlyso many times you could kill someone before it got old, and he was pretty sure he had reached that point when he started using a flair gun to snipe; something that seemed to always get the Sniper on a rant, even if he looked slightly impressed with his aim... what aim? He just randomly shot the shell closest to the sounds of fighting.

It had gotten so bad that he would lounge by the Engineer's dispenser and duck-tape random things together, once in a while getting up to try to trick the other team into a trap, or looking for cloaked Spies.

He wasn't the only one either; the Scouts were practically playing baseball in the middle of the battles, he'd seen Demomans passed out in the respawn, Engineers setting up turrets in the enemy base's intelligence room, and Snipers stalking Spies.

It wasn't just during working hours either. The only one that seemed to ever act normal was the Medic, if you could count dissecting strange creatures, Spies without bodies and birds in people's chest 'normal'. Even worse than the permanent ennui was the frayed tempers that inevitably came about when living with eight other clinically insane mercenaries who were paid to kill a set of mercenaries that looked exactly like you did. And certain people just didn'twork well with others, especially if you worked with guns.

It had gotten to the point that the teams spent more time fighting themselves than they did fighting the other team. So far, there hadn't been much impact on the field itself, but during cease-fire times you were more likely to blow up your own base than you were to spend any time planning for the next battle.  
>He figured that would change soon. Either the whole operation fell through, or some sort of really spectacular teamwork emerged. Dysfunctional, but spectacular.<p>

He'd seen it before, back when he wasn't so restricted by the meta-aramid* cloth that protected his scarred and twisted body. Years ago when his goggles were just for show. When he used a can of hairspray and a lighter and hung out with a wanna-be rock group that played bad Rolling Stones covers and had more failing grades per person than the whole school combined.

Now he would go into cardiac arrest if he ever took a breath without his mask, and even one slash in his suit could kill him. It was something the company had promised to look into, and it was true that with the Medic there his chances had drastically improved, but it didn't change the fact that he was never likely to see his fortieth birthday. He didn't really mind.

No, wait; that was a lie.

He minded, he _really_ minded. He didn't want to waste away, didn't want to be forgotten on some god forsaken piece of land, forever fighting some stupid 'old man's' rivalry. It was strange to say that a guy who took so much pleasure in burning people up also wanted to get the most out of his life. Whether that was playing air guitar, or giggling uncontrollably while watching people jump into water when he sets them aflame, to finally completing his signature burger, or spending a day just playing poker with the team.

He wants years more of fun, of burning bodies and the Demoman's singing. Trying to set the Sniper's hair on fire and stealing the Soldier's helmet. He wants to continue insulting people without them realising, and most importantly...

He wants to keep living.

….

***Meta-aramid is what they use in flame resistant things, similar to Kevlar which is Alpha-aramid. **


End file.
